


my heart's a secret (tell me you'll keep it)

by LilyEllison



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Season 3 basically made this canon, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, i'm just adding the marks, passing references to canon relationships, very minor Frank/Karen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-12 07:07:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19127083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilyEllison/pseuds/LilyEllison
Summary: Karen Page always knew she was destined for trouble.What else could you be when you grew up with the words "We're her lawyers" permanently tattooed in black over your heart?Soulmate-Identifying Marks AU! (This differs just slightly from the convention of "some people have the first thing their soulmate will say to them written on their skin" in that instead it's the just first thing you hear your soulmate say (not necessarilytoyou) — simply because that was a little more fun with canon.)





	my heart's a secret (tell me you'll keep it)

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't kidding about feeling trope-y lately! Also, I'm definitely banning myself from parenthetical titles after this. This one was inspired by Carly Rae Jepsen's Now That I Found You.
> 
> Thanks to [Quietshade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quietshade/pseuds/Quietshade) and [irelandhoneybee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/irelandhoneybee/pseuds/irelandhoneybee) for being such lovely cheerleaders!

Karen Page always knew she was destined for trouble.

What else could you be when you grew up with the words "We're her lawyers" permanently tattooed in black over your heart?

She wasn't the only person with a soulmate mark in Fagan Corners, but the few others all had much more banal phrases, ones that didn’t hint at a future of criminal activity. One of them even had their soulmate’s name written on their skin. Imagine that — knowing the first thing you would hear your soulmate say was their own name.

Karen already had the feeling that life would never be that easy on her.

Her mother always tried to make light of it. "Maybe you'll win the lottery and need lawyers to help with keeping your greedy relatives away," she teased.

"Maybe you'll discover the cure for cancer or invent something amazing."

"Maybe you're not the 'her' — did you ever think of that? Maybe you'll be a lawyer too someday, or work for a law firm or in a courthouse."

But Karen didn't think it would be any of those. And after her mom was gone, no one said things like that anymore. Karen almost always kept the mark covered, and her classmates had gotten tired of teasing her about it long ago, so no one ever really mentioned it anymore.

But after her mom was gone, she stopped being so careful. She stopped worrying about the gossip, about not wanting to look like the kind of girl who would need lawyers — plural — someday. Todd thought soulmate marks were bullshit anyway. And maybe they were. Or maybe she was tempting fate, trying to get into trouble to see if some magical fantasy soulmate would appear to rescue her from her dead-end town and her grief.

She hadn't meant for things to get so out of hand.

But she thought sometimes that the only thing that had gotten her through Kevin's death was the feeling that her soulmate must be just around the corner. Some older person — though hopefully not _too_ old — who would be well-off and smart and would stop her from being so hopelessly, ceaselessly alone.

Of course no one showed up. Her father fixed it all so she wouldn't need a lawyer. He just made her leave town.

Karen went back to being careful again. She didn't need a soulmate. She had herself and she had to learn to be OK with that. She didn't deserve anything more.

+

When it happened anyway, when her soulmate showed up in a cold police interrogation room, she was just a shell of herself, wearing clothes that were not her own, living a life that didn't feel like her own.

She was so scared, so _terrified_ , so confused and disoriented that she wasn’t even sure afterward which one of them had said it.

"We're her lawyers."

She thought it was Matt. But had it been Foggy?

Were either of them even really her soulmate? Whoever was after that Union Allied file clearly had contacts inside the jail. Had some informant seen her mark while she was cleaning Daniel Fisher's innocent blood from her body? Were they trying to use it against her?

Paranoia warred with hope until the man in the mask showed up and saved her. Until Matt and Foggy still wanted her in their lives after everything.

She didn't worry at first which one of them was her soulmate. She was just so happy to have two people to call her own. To have a home again.

She wouldn’t risk telling them about her mark. She didn't want to make things awkward. Luckily, the words were small and low enough that they were easy to keep covered, especially with the wardrobe of a law firm office manager.

Though she found herself more drawn to Matt, Karen kind of hoped it was Foggy in the beginning. Catholics were a little weird about soulmate marks. The church didn't really approve. She worried Matt would think she was marked by the devil or something else superstitious, even though she knew that most people considered that kind of thinking outdated. But even her Protestant father had found her mark unsettling.

Among the three of them, the topic never came up, somehow. The marks were rare enough that Karen guessed neither of the two of them had one. In a city as big as New York, there were support groups for people who hadn't found their soulmates yet, or who had found them and lost them, but she never considered going to one. Some people shared their marks online, even in dating apps, so everyone they met introduced themselves with the right phrase. Karen admired those people, who at least tried to take back the power of the mark, to assert their right to choose, instead of just hiding.

But she was content with Foggy-or-Matt. At least for a while.

Bit by bit, she stopped hoping it was Foggy. Every time Matt smiled, her heart raced and her breath caught and her skin turned faintly pink.

She was in love with him. It had to be Matt.

Her concerns about his potential superstitions had faded as they’d gotten closer, but she still didn't know how to tell him, any more than she knew how to tell him about Wesley or about Kevin. It was just another secret smoldering between them. Sometimes she wished she could just show it to him — let the mark speak for itself.

But since he couldn’t see it, everything relied on her using her own words, and she just couldn’t seem to get them out.

+

Later, she was glad she hadn't told him. If her soulmate didn't want her, didn't trust her, he wasn't much of a soulmate anyway. How could they have lied to each other about so much for so long?

Maybe Matt had never been her soulmate at all. Maybe she would need an entirely different set of lawyers in the future. Given her track record, that seemed pretty fucking likely, actually.

But then he disappeared in the wreckage of Midland Circle, and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Matt had always, always been her soulmate. She could still feel him, deep inside. She could even sense his presence at times, hovering in the corners of her consciousness.

_I know it’s irrational, but..._

She knew he wasn’t dead. So she waited, paid his rent and his bills and felt her heart break more each day. And then he reappeared, full of nothing but dust and weak excuses, and she discovered that souls could break too.

But he came back to them. Rose out of the ashes and returned to her for real. And time healed, as it does. Time, and working side by side at Nelson, Murdock & Page, and talking a lot, and crying some, too. She thought maybe it would be better to just stay friends. Platonic soulmates could be a thing, right? She even tried, once or twice, to move on. She went on a couple of half-hearted dates, visited a maybe-almost someone in the hospital.

(As he moved around in his hospital gown, she caught sight of Frank's mark, a little loopy script not far below his collarbone. _"Hey, buddy, you know anything else?"_ It didn't surprise her that they were both marked, that they had this in common, too. Just as it didn't surprise her when he told her to go, even though she fought him about it, even though it hurt.)

+

Moving on was never really going to work, especially when Matt was always finding excuses to walk her home, to eat together, to invite her touch. And by the time the four of them stayed in for New Year's — Foggy and Marci and Matt and Karen, she noticed that every time Matt smiled, her heart raced and her breath caught and her skin turned faintly pink.

So, at midnight, when Matt moved to kiss her cheek, she caught his lips instead, and at long last, everything fell into place.

She planned to tell him eventually, as soon as their relationship was more settled, but instead he found out the very first time she had him in her bed.

"What's this, Karen?" he asked, tracing his thumb in a curve over the skin around her left breast. "'We're her lawyers’?"

"You can feel that?" she said, shocked. Her mark had never felt raised to her, never noticeably different from the skin around it. But Matt's senses were heightened, and of course that would include touch.

"You have a soulmate mark," he said slowly, clearly trying to process what it all meant. "I—I said those words, didn’t I?"

"Yeah," she sighed. "When you and Foggy came to the police station, the night I was arrested."

"You never..."

"I wasn't sure at first. And then I didn't want you to feel obligated. I didn't want guilt or pity. I wanted it to be a choice."

Fear shivered down her spine. This was going to scare him away. He was going to run screaming from the idea of being so tied to her.

Instead, he pulled her close and kissed her like he never wanted to stop. "I choose you, Karen," he said huskily, pressing his forehead to hers. "I love you."

"I love you, too." She smiled, tingling from her head to her toes as their lips met again, feeling a happiness that had once seemed impossible flood through her, warm as sunshine.

It would probably never be easy, being Matt Murdock's soulmate. But Karen had always known she was destined for trouble. And she wouldn’t choose anyone else, even if she could.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like someone else could do a better job with this concept, but this is what I've got! I hope one of you will be inspired to expand on this variation or do another soulmate AU!


End file.
